The present invention relates to fall protections for rescue cages of an aerial ladder, in particular for firefighting vehicles
Working in an cage on the tip of an aerial ladder, and in particular a rescue cage, often requires leaning out of the cage, and in other cases could also require to maintain the doors open. In addition, the cage might crash against an obstacle with resulting heavy rebound.
All these situations might cause a person in the cage to be thrown out of it.
To prevent the risk of falling, self belay systems can be used. For example, the operators can be provided with a safety harness connected through ropes to the cage.
The ropes are not extensible so they limit the operator movements.
Retractable fall arresters are known. A retractable fall arrester consists of a self winding spool on which a safety belt is wound. The safety belt can be unrolled to a predetermined speed, beyond such a predetermined speed, the spool locks the safety belt.
They are designed to be hung up, for example to a horizontal arm, while the safety belt is pulled downward. Different usages are not permissible due to the fact that the retractable fall arrester cannot bear strengths different from those derived from said downward pulling.
In addition, belaying with standard retractable fall arrester stored in the rescue cage would require a safe place to store the fall arrester, and on the other hand enough clearance to make sure there are no lateral forces on the retractable fall arrester at any orientation while used. Moreover, time consuming actions would be necessary to get the fall arrester out of the storage and ready to use.